Days Read Online Free PDF Page B

those years ago, and the pledge which Days upholds to this day. (Linda has read the potted history of the store on the inside front cover.) But how can a catalogue, even one as immense as this, contain everything , every piece of merchandise in existence? It just isn’t possible. Is it?
    In the week that she has had the catalogue Linda has been able to peruse less than a quarter of it, but she has managed to pick out a number of items she would like to buy. She hoists the huge tome open and flips through to a section she has bookmarked with a slip of paper. Ties. Dozens of men’s ties blaze up at her from a photo spread that illustrates just some of the thousands of items of men’s neck apparel listed on adjacent pages. Linda has circled a dark green silk kipper with a repeating pattern of coins and made a note of its serial number. Gordon needs to jazz up his image. When it comes to clothing, his penchant for the plain and the simple is all very well, but a bit of excitement, a dash of colour to offset his sartorial conservatism, would not go amiss. She may never be able to persuade him to wear, say, a bright shirt, but she might just manage to get him to try out an interesting tie, particularly if, like the one she has chosen, it has a thematic connection to his job. And who knows, perhaps the tie will alert the branch manager to a facet of Gordon’s character that Linda has for a long time known exists, or at any rate believed exists, or in fact (let’s be honest here) hoped exists. She is sure Gordon used to be an exciting person once. When they were courting, and in the early days of their marriage, he was bold, spontaneous, impulsive, even dashing... wasn’t he? Surely he was. And still is. It is simply that over the years this side of him has become buried beneath an accretion of responsibilities and concerns, like a ship’s hull becoming encrusted and weighed down with barnacles. Now that they have their Days card, that is about to change. Everything is about to change.
    She flips on through the catalogue to the Clocks section, where she finds another item which she is fully intent on buying today.
    In itself the carriage clock is nothing special. A reproduction of an antique, its brass casing boasts sections of Gothic filigree laced over panels of dark blue glass, and instead of feet the clock rests on the backs of four winged cherubs, whose stubby arms hold trumpets to their lips and whose cheeks bulge with the effort of blowing. These are nice enough features, but there are many other more ornate and more beautiful examples of horology on display. However, the clock happens to be an exact copy of one that Linda’s parents once owned, an heirloom that had been passed down the distaff side of the family, from Linda’s great-grandmother to her grandmother to her mother. It used to sit in pride of place on the mantelshelf in the living room, and her mother devotedly used to keep it wound up and, twice a year, give it a thorough polish to bring up the gleam of the brass. It was, perhaps, the most elegant thing the family owned, certainly the object with the most sentimental value... until the day Linda’s father saw to it that Linda never got to inherit it.
    The moment she came across the picture of the reproduction clock in the Days catalogue, Linda understood that she had been offered a second chance to possess something which she had been deprived of by an act of cheap, casual malice while she was still a child. It was almost as if the clock had been waiting in the catalogue’s pages for her to discover it, and as soon as she laid eyes on it, she knew it had to be hers. She had no choice in the matter. And though she has earmarked several other items for purchase today, even if she buys nothing else, she is determined that she will not leave Days without the clock, for her, and the tie, for Gordon.
    It is 7.37 according to the digital timer on the oven. In a few minutes she will go back upstairs and wake